Mark Haslam Award Winner

Tea Creek by Ryan Dickie

Green Pitch Winner

Becoming A Landscape by Emily Graves

Best Canadian Feature Jury 

Jen Muranitz

Jen Muranetz is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and visual storyteller living on unceded Coast Salish territories. Her films are character-driven and impact-focused, centered around environmental justice and human resilience. She directed and produced ‘Fairy Creek’, which won Best Canadian Feature at Planet in Focus 2024 and Best Music Score Feature Length Documentary at the 2025 Leo Awards. Her previous works have screened at prestigious festivals including Big Sky Documentary Film Festival, DOK Leipzig, Planet in Focus, and DOXA. Jen has participated in industry programs such as the Canadian Creative Accelerator, DOCNYC’s Voices of Canada Roundtables, Whistler Film Festival’s Doc Lab, and SMI’s Story to Action.

Myrna Moretti

Myrna Moretti, PhD is a Postdoctoral Associate and instructor in the Faculty of Information and Media Studies at Western University. Her research specializes in gender, technology, labour, and cultural history and she has previously worked on histories of film and social movements. Myrna has almost a decade of experience teaching film, media, and culture at the university level. She serves as a peer reviewer for multiple international journals on culture and previously reviewed grants for the National Endowment for the Humanities. Myrna is also an experimental filmmaker. Her volunteer work includes multiple Toronto-based climate advocacy groups.

Joan Prowse

As a documentary filmmaker, television producer and digital media creator, Joan is passionate to tell stories that entertain and inspire change. She co-founded CineFocus Canada to tell these these stories worldwide and to deliver them on accessible platforms.

Joan is a writer, director, and editor known for the international documentary “Beauty and the Beach” and the Juno-nominated “Buffy Sainte-Marie: A Multimedia Life.” Her series “Green Heroes” received nominations at the Banff World Media Festival and nextMedia, produced across multiple platforms with TVO and the Bell Fund. An alumnus of several prestigious programs, she is a member of the Writers Guild of Canada and served as a jury member at this year’s Banff World Media Festival Rockie Awards. Joan’s environmental commitment includes her board role at the Planet in Focus Environmental Film Festival (2010-2017) and training as a Climate Reality Leader. Her current documentary, “A Watershed Moment,” explores the restoration of a campus parking lot to its original wetland state after 60 years.

Best International Feature Film Jury

Lara Bulger

Lara Bulger has a deep-rooted commitment to the arts. With a Bachelor’s degree in Music with minors in Film and English, plus a Master’s Degree in Arts Leadership, she is passionate about the capacity of art to bring about social change. Lara is currently pursuing her Ph.D. in Cultural Studies at Queen’s University, focusing on documentary film and its social, political and cultural impacts. Lara has extensive work in film festivals, including TIFF, Hot Docs, the Toronto Jewish Film Festival and the Kingston Canadian Film Festival, and has also been a programmer and jury member for various festivals across Ontario.

Glynnis Ritter

Glynnis Ritter is an Impact Producer, Festival Programmer, and Program Director committed to using documentary film as a catalyst for social change. She has led impact and programming initiatives across the United States, Europe, the UK, and Latin America, and recently joined The Video Consortium as Director of Programs. Her previous experience includes roles at WG Film, Together Films, and Picture Motion, as well as programming for environmental film festivals Cinema Planeta and Patagonia Eco Fest.

Lauren Howes

Lauren Howes (non-binary) was appointed Managing Director of the Doc Institute in June 2023. Howes has more than 20 years of Executive not-for-profit management experience. Previous to joining Doc Institute they were the long serving Executive Director at Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre (2006-2021), and Executive Director at Inside Out Festival (2021-2022). Over the past decade Howes has served the Arts Community sitting on the boards of the Toronto Arts Council, the Media Arts Network of Ontario, nationally with the Independent Media Arts Alliance, the former Toronto Media Arts Centre (TMAC) and for the streaming platform vucavu.com. Howes has also participated on juries with the OAC, TAC, Canada Council and numerous film festivals. Through their work in distribution Howes has extensively promoted Canadian Media Art, film and documentary to markets and festivals across Europe, South America, India, and Southeast Asia.

Best Canadian Short Film Jury

Sadetło Scott

As a Tłı̨chǫ Dene writer, director, producer from Yellowknife, NT, Sadetło Scott aims to help share the Indigenous experience through storytelling that centers land, language, culture, and way of life. Her educational background is a mix of culture and film, including a BA in Indigenous Governance, Certificates in Heritage and Culture, Motion Picture Production and Cinematography. Her short climate documentary “Edaxàdets’eetè / We Save Ourselves” premiered at imagineNATIVE, won Planet in Focus International Environmental Film Festival 2024 Best Canadian Short Film Award and has gone on to screen across the circumpolar north.

Ali Kazimi

Ali Kazimi is a filmmaker, author and media artist whose work deals with race, social justice migration, history and memory. He is the recipient of the 2019 Governor General’s Award for Visual and Media Arts and the same year he received a Doctor of Letters, honoris causa from the University of British Columbia. His award winning and critically acclaimed documentaries include Narmada: A Valley Rises (’94), Shooting Indians: A Journey with Jeffrey Thomas (’97), Documenting Dissent (’01), Continuous Journey (’04), Runaway Grooms (’06), Rex versus Singh (’09), Random Acts of Legacy (’16), and Beyond Extinction: Sinixt Resurgence (’22).

Anthony Truong Swan

As the Impact Director of Story Money Impact, Anthony Truong Swan works with social justice and environmental documentaries to develop partnerships across all sectors of civil society, helping to put relevant issues-based films on the front lines of creating social impact.

With a decade of experience organizing, executing, moderating and evaluating film screening events and panel discussions across Canada both virtually and in-person, Anthony brings agility and care developed in his time as Festival Director of REEL CANADA’s RCtv, Our Films in Our Schools and Welcome to Canada programmes.

Best International Short Film Jury

Caroline Bacle

Born in Montreal, now based in the UK, Caroline Bacle is a seasoned documentary filmmaker who has directed for the likes of BBC, Channel 4, Sky, CBC, and PBS. Her feature documentary LOST RIVERS won the Planet in Focus Best Canadian Feature Film Honourable Mention in 2012 and has been screened in over 100 festivals worldwide. Her film I WON’T STAND FOR IT received the Planet in Focus International Short Film Award in 2023.

Eleonora Isunza

She has worked at the Morelos Radio and Television Institute since 1988 as a writer, producer, and presenter of several radio and television programs. In 2009 she co-founded Cinema Planeta, the International Film and Environmental Festival of Mexico, which she co-directs since then. She is co-founder and president of the Green Film Network where 32 festivals from 30 countries participate. She co-produced and co-directed her first feature films “Nahui Ollin, Sol de Movimiento” and “Mar Incendiado” which both draw attention to the impacts of climate change in Mexico. In collaboration with several activists, she managed to change the law of solid waste to prohibit single-use plastic and polystyrene in Morelos and 28 states. She works at the Secretariat of Culture in Morelos.

Will Jameson

Will is responsible for producing One World Media’s flagship event, the One World Media Awards, the OWM Global Reporting Summit happening in Nairobi and London this year and the organization’s year-round events programme. He has worked in events and festivals for over twenty years mainly in the UK and Africa. He founded the award winning Lake of Stars Festival in Malawi and has gone on to create other festivals in southern Africa including a Day of Ideas with the EU, the Children’s Future Festival with UNICEF and the Lilongwe Shorts Film Festival. He has organised a peace concert in South Sudan, music tours from South Africa to Mozambique and launched NGO Girl Effect’s youth brand across Malawi with a series of music videos, workshops, screenings and roadshows. 

Mark Haslam Award Jury

Julian Carrington

Planet in Focus Programmer

Julian Carrington is a freelance writer and film programmer based in Toronto. He has contributed to publications including The Globe & Mail, Indiewire, and Cinema Scope, and, in 2014, served as a programming associate with the Toronto International Film Festival. In 2015, he became manger of the Documentary Organization of Canada’s Festival Concierge initiative, supporting filmmakers in developing distribution and audience engagement strategies. Julian joined Planet in Focus as the festival’s associate programmer in 2016.

Lesley Johnson

Planet in Focus Programmer

Lesley Johnson is a director, producer and programmer, based in Toronto and Yellowknife. She studied Film Production in York University’s MFA program, and holds degrees in wildlife and environmental sciences. Before becoming a filmmaker, she worked in community-based research in the Northwest Territories, and on studies chasing after the likes of terns and wolverines. She is the former director and programmer of the Yellowknife International Film Festival, and of a Cinema Politica chapter.